I'll Go With You
by Entwinedlove
Summary: One-shot. / When Sergeant James Barnes falls through a time-tampered sling ring portal into her lab, Hermione takes it on herself to help him get adjusted to life in the future. As she does, she has to finally deal with the things that have been haunting her for the past fourteen years. (Canon disabled character, diverges from Deathly Hallows at Battle of Hogwarts)


Alpha Credit to the very awesome: FawkesyLady, WS, and AC. I appreciated the discussion and brainstorming you three did with me, it really helped me pin things down the way I needed.

The date of the Battle of New York has been moved up by two days.

* * *

Bucky could tell something was wrong before he opened his eyes. He was comfortable. He hadn't been comfortable since he'd last slept at home in the bedroom he shared with his sister. He wasn't too hot or too cold and the surface he was on wasn't hard like his army cot or the table in Zola's laboratory.

He opened his eyes a crack at first, just to test the lighting. It was dim and artificial. He opened his eyes fully and looked around. He was on a bed in a small room. Against one wall was a tall cabinet with three door pulls, a clean looking armchair, and a narrow writing desk. The light was coming from the wall above the desk.

He took a deep breath and marvelled at how normal it smelled. The tang of blood and gunpowder was gone, the scent of unwashed bodies didn't linger. He smelled clean sheets and... flowers? He sat up and turned at the same time, setting his feet on the floor. One of his heels kicked a ceramic bowl under the bed. He glanced down his brow furrowing. Flowers decorated the sides of the bowl. Bedpan? He looked around again, more thoroughly this time. Was he in some small hospital? There wasn't a window.

He looked down at himself, he felt fine but maybe...

"Fucking Christ," he muttered. A whimper followed and then he was sick without warning, partially digested C-ration coated his nicely cleaned jacket and trousers.

His left hand—"Fuck!"—his left arm was gone to the middle of his bicep. He coughed and his breath started coming in pants as he stared down at himself. "What the—"

The sound of a door clicking and opening had him trying to crawl backwards over the bed away from whoever was there. They'd cut his fucking arm off!

It was a brown-skinned woman with a prominent nose that he recognised from some of the British-Indian troops he'd seen from the south. She wasn't wearing any nurses' uniform he'd ever seen but something more like a long-sleeved dress.

"Oh, you're awake, good," she said at first before she really got a look at him. She stopped at the door and didn't advance, raising up both hands to show they were empty. "Hey, hey, breathe, all right? You're safe, I promise."

He was right in that she had a British accent. Her calm tone didn't help really and he was starting to shiver. It took him a few tries to find his voice. "Wha—what did you do to me?" He tried not to glance back down at his missing arm—he gagged again—but not looking didn't make the knowledge that his fucking arm was gone go away.

"All we did was clean you up and bandage your wounds."

"Ba—bandage...?" he was still panting and shivering.

"Yes. You arrived here missing—"

"No! No, where the _fuck_ is here? I—" he couldn't think, couldn't remember what had happened, all he could do was shiver and panic. He grabbed at his holster for his sidearm but found it empty. He jerked and grabbed at his boot, his knife was still there. He held it out in front of him at an angle, to ward off the woman from coming closer. She hadn't moved.

She didn't even look worried that he'd armed himself against her. Like what the hell could a man with only one arm do to her?

"Sir," she said, her tone just as soft and concerned as it had been before. "I can give—" she shook her head like she knew she'd said something wrong and started again, "I can tell you where to find something to take that will calm you down. I can help clean you up again. I just need you to breathe for me. You're having a panic attack and hyperventilating. It's very normal considering the circumstances. Will you let me help you?"

He grit his teeth to try and stop the panting but it didn't help, just made trying to get air into his lungs harder. He made eye contact with the woman and nodded.

"Good, all right." She took a half step back and reached behind her, where he couldn't see, and then produced a small paper bag. She flapped it open and leaned a little further in to hand it to him. He had to put his knife down. It took a minute to make his body follow the command but he did and then he grabbed the bag. "Now, breathe into it for me, okay?" He did as she asked, holding the paper bag up against his nose and mouth. She held eye contact with him. "Right. So my name's Padma Patil. I'm a healer, a nurse. I'm not married but I've got a crup at home." His eyebrows must have shown a hint of confusion because she just nodded and kept talking. "It's basically a dog with two tails. He's a rambunctious jerk, really. Loves chewing on my shoes if I don't put them away when I get home and I'm always finding fur on my clothes. My sister used to think it was hilarious until she got a half-kneazle—a cat—and now her clothes are worse than mine."

His breathing had calmed but now all he could smell was the sourness of vomit and bile. He took one last deep breath in the bag and then removed it. She nodded and gave him a smile.

"Very good. You keep that close because I've got a lot of... fantastical things to tell you but first, what's the last thing you remember?"

He looked away, letting his gaze trail down the right sleeve of his blue jacket to his hand. He wasn't wearing gloves. Why wasn't he... It had been freezing cold but he'd given his gloves to Dernier that day. The train... they'd meant to capture Arnim Zola. He remembered picking up Steve's shield and... He'd fallen. "How the hell did I survive the fall?" he muttered.

He'd forgotten the woman, Patil, was even there until she spoke again. "You fell a long way?"

He jerked and swallowed the bile that was starting to climb back up his throat. "Yeah. I... I fell. It was... freezing."

She nodded. "From what we could gather, someone was dabbling in things they shouldn't have and in the process actually saved you. Would you like me to clean you up before we continue?"

He looked back down at his jacket and trousers. He didn't want to strip in front of this woman, even if she was a nurse. He didn't want to see whatever was being hidden by the remaining bit of sleeve. Nothing actively hurt, though, and he wondered what sort of painkillers they'd given him. "Umm," he started.

"This is part of that fantastical stuff, okay? You don't have to take anything off."

He looked up at her in confusion. "How the—"

There was a thin wooden dowel in her hand. Not a dowel, really, but something...

"This is my wand, I'm going to aim it at your clothes now." He watched as she slowly brought the tip up until it was pointing at him. She twisted her wrist or something and the clumps of former C-ration simply disappeared from his clothes. She did something else and the wet spots and even the smell were gone.

He blinked and stared dumbly at where the mess had been. He returned his gaze to her. She still _looked_ normal. "So you're a...ma—magician?"

"Witch."

Bucky took another breath and nodded. "Okay. Witch. Right. And you can't..." he trailed off and tipped his head in a gesture toward his arm.

"Unfortunately, no. We can't regrow limbs that were lost due to magic."

He felt a strange urge to giggle. "Magic?"

She gave a little shrug and smiled. "Yes, that's how you arrived here. Magic can heal mundane injuries and we tried to heal yours but... I wish we could do more for you." She turned and looked back out the door and after a moment returned her attention to him. "I have a friend here to help explain how you ended up here. Is it all right if she and I step inside?"

He was still unsure but she'd been hospitable to him so far. He picked up his knife and tucked it back into his boot and settled down on the bed with his feet on the floor again. When he was still, Patil came into the room and perched her hip against the arm of the chair. Her friend came in and sat on the chair. She had brown hair that was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head and her outfit was similar to Patil's. When she caught him looking at her she smiled and it softened her schoolmarm appearance significantly.

"My name's Hermione Granger and I believe we might be able to piece together what happened to you and how you got here if we work together."

"You're not a nurse," Bucky said. He felt ridiculously stupid after it left his mouth. Did his charm get taken with his arm? What was that?

"No, I work in the Department of Mysteries in the time and dimensional space division. I study time travel among other anomalies."

His brow furrowed. "Time travel." He bit off the next words he wanted to blurt and closed his mouth. The nurse had said fantastical, right?

"Yes. First, I'd like it if you could tell me your name, date of birth, and where and when you were the last you remember. What you were doing is optional, of course, but the more details the better."

"Sergeant James Barnes, the 107th Infantry Division. Serial number 32557038." He had a brief moment of wondering if these people were enemies and if he shouldn't say anything else but they were British and the British were allies. Christ, he sure hoped they were British. He licked his lips and continued, "Born March 10, 1917."

Before he could continue, both women's eyes widened and they seemed to hold their breath.

They didn't say anything so he kept on, "My commando unit was attempting to capture a German scientist named Arnim Zola in the Alps. It was... the last day of January 1945. I fell... out of the train." He shook his head. "I don't remember anything after that."

Granger nodded and brought her hand up to her lips as she listened. "Wow," she whispered and nodded to herself before she addressed him. "I don't want you to panic but I have a feeling you might. You've still got that little brown bag?" Bucky looked down at his lap and the bed and found it by his leg. He returned his attention to her. "It's the second of February 2012 and you're in London, England."

Bucky's breath did hitch at hearing that but he didn't start hyperventilating again. "Sixty-seven years..."

"Yes, and you still look, I assume, as you did then, in your late twenties. I know we've mentioned that there's magic and time travel. At the moment I only have speculation regarding how you ended up here. There are different types of magic and mysticism in the world and we all can do a variety of things. I have a feeling someone was dabbling in mysticism and time rips in about the same place as your... accident."

"What happened to my—how did time travel do this?" he asked, raising what remained of his left arm. It felt as normal as usual even though there was nothing there. Why didn't it hurt?

Patil answered, "You had superficial wounds on your face and hands. My diagnostic detected heavy bruising on your back, broken ribs, a broken ankle, and a broken femur. I set the broken bones when you arrived and your body seems to have healed the rest while you slept. You said you fell from a train, likely from a vast height. You didn't just fall straight down into a sling ring portal, you slammed into rocks on your way down. We think the portal closed before you were completely through." She gestured toward his stump.

He looked away from her as the feeling of falling and ice tried to swallow him whole.

He came to laying down again and he blinked at the ceiling wondering what the hell had just happened. The bed was still comfortable and that lent to it the idea that waking up in the future without an arm wasn't the nightmare he'd thought it might have been.

"Good to see you awake again, Sergeant." It was that Granger woman's voice. He turned his head to look at her. Patil was gone and Granger was sitting with a book open in her lap. She must have caught his gaze darting to the closed door because she answered his unspoken question. "You passed out and woke briefly but then you slipped right back into sleep. It's after eight and her shift ended at six.

"Yours didn't?"

She smiled. "You're technically my ward since you fell out of the ceiling in my department and it was only quick thinking that stopped you from also slamming into my floor. This room is only for temporary stays; it's usually meant for researchers when they need to be close to their work overnight." She paused to let him absorb her words. "I have a few options if you like?"

He nodded. He continued to lay there on the bed, still feeling overwhelmed.

"I can get you checked into our magical hospital or a non-magical one if you'd prefer. According to the most recent Diagnostics Spell, you're physically well aside from the missing limb. A non-magical hospital will ask more questions and might even release you immediately. If that's what you'd like, I can do the same but I figure being thrown sixty years into the future will require a lot of adjusting. I'd prefer to not have you wandering around and possibly getting hurt because of the changes in the world, especially considering you're American."

She closed the book and turned, opening the cabinet by the top pull, and returned the book to a shelf.

"If this room's temporary, where am I supposed to go if I don't go to a hospital?"

She closed the cabinet and turned back to him. "I have a guest bedroom in my house you can stay in. While you get acquainted with the future, at least." She looked down at her hands and softened her voice a little more. "I'll also help you look for any surviving family."

"Everyone I know is dead, huh?" he asked. Despite having had living parents and three sisters, two of whom had been married last he heard, his first thoughts were of Steve. Had he survived the war? He and Peggy probably got married and had a few kids, right? He felt his stomach swoop at the thought of Steve dying.

"So what do you choose? Hospital? On your own? Or with me?"

"You'll tell me more about magic as well as the future?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll go with you."

Her smile was bright but brittle. She stood and reopened the cabinet, with the second door pull. Inside wasn't a bookcase like before, now it was a coat closet. She pulled an honest-to-god cloak off a hanger and pulled it on. The blue of it almost matched his jacket. It looked nice against her light skin.

He sat up, slowly, more aware of the way his body felt slightly lighter on the left. He put his feet on the floor, his heel hit the ceramic bowl again. The sudden urge to piss was strong. "Umm, where's the head?" he asked as he stood.

"Toilet?" she asked, turning from the door. "There's a public one on the way out or I could give you a moment and you could use the bowl there. It's spelled to automatically vanish waste." His eyebrows slid up his forehead. She grinned and nodded, "Public loo, it is. When I first learned about magic, I was sceptical as well. Some things just need to be dealt with in a way we're most used to." He nodded and followed her out of the room.

There were a few more doors down the hall and he assumed they were all little bedrooms. There was a window at the end of the hall but he couldn't see much beyond that it was dark outside. She led him into a small area with elevators and pointed out a door across the way. "Loo's right there. I'll just call for the lift while I wait." He was worried that things in the head were going to be strange and different but he needn't have worried. Toilets looked about the same. He relieved himself and returned to Granger.

The elevator went up, which confused him. "Were we underground? Or is personal aircraft a thing now?"

She laughed lightly. "We were about 9 levels below the street."

"Damn." He glanced around the elevator car while he processed that. "But there was a window in the hall down there?"

"Magic. It's charmed to show the outside. When the Ministry was first built, knowing how far down we are caused an immense level of claustrophobia in workers. The charmed windows were meant to alleviate it. Most people nowadays know that if they don't like enclosed spaces to not take a job here at the Ministry." The elevator slowed and stopped. It didn't ding and it was only when a bored-sounding woman's voice bid them a goodnight did he realise there hadn't been any music playing.

The elevator door opened and Bucky followed her into an enormous black-tiled atrium. Along a far wall were large fireplaces and in the centre was a large golden statue of a crowd of people. In the front were five young men and women, arms outstretched with wands in their hands. The front-most statue was of a man with glasses and messy hair. Half a step behind him was a man and a woman. They held each other's hand. Behind them were another man and woman, both of whom had their non-wand wielding arms back like they were protecting the crowd.

Bucky was fascinated with how lifelike the entire thing looked. On the base of the statue were the words "Golden Trio." He hadn't meant to, but he walked closer. The details were fantastic and he wanted to turn to his side and talk to Steve about it. The figures looked worn down from the slump of their shoulders, and their sculpted clothes were worn. His eyes caught on the first woman's face and the halo of wild hair around her head. He felt like he recognised her somehow.

"The artist did a really good job, huh?" Granger said from beside him. He looked at her and then back at the statue twice.

"That's you?"

She nodded but looked uneasy. "We ended a war. I'll tell you about it sometime. Let's go home. My house is about a twenty-minute walk from here."

He followed her out of a set of large, heavy doors that seemed to echo and clang behind them. The sounds of a busy city shocked him, first, followed by the brightness of it all.

"I guess there's not a blackout anymore, huh?" he muttered.

"Oh god, I totally forgot to tell you what was possibly the second most important thing besides the date," she said turning to look at him. There was a sharp breeze and her hair had started slipping from her bun. "The Allies won the war. Hitler committed suicide, victory was declared in Europe in May 1945 and in the Pacific in September of the same year."

Of all the information that she'd given him this one did bring the most relief. He could feel some of the tension he'd carried with him since his number had been called seep into the cold air around him. The stiff little laugh that burst out of him caught him off guard but he couldn't stop it or the smile that spread his lips. The war was over. Thank fucking Christ. He looked around, more at ease now, even in the icy, wet wind and bright lights and loud noise of the future. He might have even sighed. He turned to her and gestured in front of him. "Well, it's cold, let's go."

She smiled back and nodded, turning and speed walking down the sidewalk. He kept pace with her easily enough.

 *** . * . ***

 _Hermione didn't know where she was. The bed she was laying on didn't smell faintly of cat wee or unwashed body. It smelled sort of clean and like home._

 _Home._

 _She opened her eyes to see the ceiling of the Hogwarts infirmary spread out above her. She wanted to cherish the buttresses and appreciate the curve of each arch but instead of feeling any sort of happiness at seeing that beautiful ceiling and knowing in her heart that she was home, she was at Hogwarts, she couldn't feel anything at all._

 _Well, that was a lie, she felt exhausted and heartbroken and angry and like the entire world had been destroyed all around her. She wanted to weep but she was too tired and all she could do was whimper in her silent misery._

 _It was dark and the half moon shined through the mullioned windows. It cast bright white across the stonework in the ceiling and high up the walls. She wanted to admire the brightness and the clarity it showed her but she couldn't. She looked away and waited for her eyes to adjust to the even deeper darkness around her.  
_

 _She needed to get up._

 _She couldn't remember why at first but it didn't matter and she rolled to the side and stood, practically flinging herself from the bed. She held her feet for maybe a half a second before she crumpled to her knees by the bed. All around her were more beds than she'd ever seen in the hospital wing before, all full with people. There were bandages that were bloody wrapped around this leg or that arm, burns that needed Burn Paste reapplied. There were quiet moans and whimpers from all around but no one tending them. Everyone was asleep or dead._

 _Or dead._

 _Hermione couldn't walk, she didn't have the energy to retake her feet, but she needed to wee. She laid there on the floor, crumpled on her own limbs as the cold from the stone below her seeped into her skin through her hospital-issued pyjamas. She didn't even have the strength to crawl across the large room to go to the bathroom. She sat there for minutes, maybe hours, and cried and when she couldn't help herself any longer she lost the battle with her bladder and her dignity.  
_

 _The room was quiet and the moonlight was too bright and the shadows were too dark and Hermione was wet and tired and her heart was broken. She didn't know how long she sat there, soaking in her own concentrated ammonia before she reached for the bed and found the will to drag herself back up.  
_

 _She stopped with her knees on the floor, leaning against the bed and the position reminded her so much of her childhood, her parents teaching her about God and teaching her how to pray. She'd stopped believing years ago. She wished she had the strength to shout and rage at Him but she didn't. She didn't even know if He'd listen to a witch._

 _And yet... she laid her head against the plain, scratchy hospital sheets and prayed. She prayed for her friends, for her family. She prayed for every single person in this room and in the castle, she prayed for the people in the Great Hall and their souls. She wept because she didn't have the energy to rage. She wept because she didn't have the faith to go on.  
_

 _After another long period of time, when her knees had gone from hurting to numb, did Hermione finally find the will to pull herself the rest of the way onto the bed. She squirmed under the cover and slept for days._

 *** . * . ***

Granger's house was a four-story brownstone that pushed itself into existence after she whispered the address, "Hermione Granger lives at 12 Grimmauld Place." Bucky would probably have been more awed had he not already been overwhelmed with his circumstances. He didn't remember much of what the house even looked like that first night because after she directed him to a bedroom on the third floor, he'd shucked his jacket and his boots and fallen asleep before his head hit the pillow.

The smell of bacon woke him up. He followed the scent all the way down into the basement to find Granger cooking breakfast. "Are you hungry?" she asked. Hungry was an understatement, they found out.

Unfortunately, his system was not pleased with the food, whether the quantity or the flavour, he wasn't sure and he spent several hours camped out in one of Granger's bathrooms tending to one urgent need or the other. When he finally emerged, sweaty, shivering, and pale, she took one look at him and nodded. "Why don't you take a shower? Set your clothes outside the door and I'll clean them and return them. I'll get some broth heating, you're bound to be dehydrated. I probably should have known better than to feed you so much heavy food."

And she took care of him. If Bucky hadn't been so overwhelmed by everything he might have told her to stop coddling him but he couldn't complain too much. It did feel nice to be taken care of. She took him shopping, both for groceries—after she'd slowly introduced him to modern foods—and clothes. Seeing men walking around in what amounted to their underwear all the time had been weird at first but after buying a few outfits that would help him blend in when he wanted to walk around the city she took him to a magical clothing shop and he let her buy him several suits that reminded him of new versions of what had been in his closet in Brooklyn.

The sheer amount of money she had and spent on him shocked him but not as much as the prices of things. He knew it was a different currency but he'd done a bit of shopping when he'd been on leave in London before. There were several times during their clothes shopping that he had insisted that he didn't need new things, buying from the Salvation Army would be just fine. She took him there too.

Granger didn't have a television in her house but she assured him that most people did now, sometimes one in several rooms. She had two radios though, magical and mundane, and the access and the variety staggered him. She had a personal telephone that fit in the palm of her hand that she could call to anywhere in the world.

And the 'internet.'

Miraculous, crazy, weird. Anything he wanted to know, anything he wanted to learn—right there at his fingertips. It didn't take long for him to want to know what happened to Steve and his family and one day, Granger brought him something she called a tablet. He could access the same 'internet' on the tablet as her telephone and her only request was that she be there when he looked for his family.

The first name he searched for was Steve Rogers, of course. The top link was for a website called Wikipedia and he tapped it. At the very bottom of the article, mixed in with all the information about the experiment he underwent that had been classified at the time, the comics, and the films, was information on what happened to him. Bucky tried very hard not to let the tears that had gathered in his eyes fall as he read that not a month after he fell from the train that Steve died in a plane crash in the North Atlantic.

And when he set the tablet aside Granger was standing right there, a box of disposable tissues in her hand and a tray of tea things hovering behind her shoulder.

He needed her help to locate his family, though, and during that process, she'd asked him to call her Hermione. "How do you know how to find people who aren't, you know, famous?" He asked her as they were piecing together the Barnes family legacy onto a white blackboard-that-was-not-a-blackboard that she'd set up in her enormous library.

"I've had some practice," she said. She smiled but it conveyed sadness rather than joy. She stepped back from the board and set her hands at her hips, looking over their work where she'd just pinned an army photograph of a young man named James who'd been drafted to fight in a war in Vietnam. A nephew. Dead in the war at the age of 27, unfortunately. James's life had been a repeat of Bucky's with those details and Bucky wondered if the name James was cursed. Bucky bit at his bottom lip as he looked at the young man who looked so much like the oldest of his sisters.

She turned around and changed the subject. She always did that when they found another member of his family dead. This was the fifth one. "So, you know how I screamed the other day when there was a rat in the kitchen?"

The memory of her screaming and him stumbling down two flights of stairs half dressed with his combat knife in his only hand came back to him. At the time he'd been pissed off that she screamed like that over a rat but now, thinking back on the moment a week later, he had to laugh. She'd told him enough about magic that he knew she wouldn't have had any trouble taking care of a rat if it hadn't startled her by jumping out of one of the upper cabinets when she'd gone looking for some flour. "Yeah?" He asked from where he was sitting on a stiff-backed Victorianesque loveseat.

"It reminded me of someone in the war."

"A rat reminded you of someone? Must of been an ugly sonnova bitch."

She smiled, huffing a little laugh. It took a few moments before the little huffing turned into actual chuckles that almost fell out of her like she had forgotten how. "Yes," she managed to say before she started to full-out giggle. She had to sit down and lean her head over her knees to stop the maniacal giggles. She inhaled deeply when they finally faded. "Yes, actually, he was rather unfortunately looking but... well, he could turn into a rat."

He was smiling as he watched her, proud of himself for getting this typically stoic woman to giggle like that. "Turning into a rat must have been shitty. Why would you turn into a rat?"

"It's a type of human-to-animal Transfiguration. People who do it are called Animagus and they don't choose the animal, their magic decides for them based on their personality and their inner traits. That's not the point of this conversation, though."

"No? Must have been a scummy fella."

"He was. At one point he cut off his own hand to return a physical body to a Dark Wizard. It kicked off the war I was in."

Bucky was still having trouble mentally dealing with his missing limb even as his body was getting used to the change in balance and the enormous amount of things he needed help with now. His stomach swooped at hearing that someone could do this to themselves. His thoughts must have been written on his face as she didn't seem to expect him to respond.

"The Dark Wizard cast an obscure, technically Dark spell, that gave Wormtail a hand made of silver."

He waited for comprehension and it came in bits and pieces. A bad guy gave another bad guy a metal hand to replace the one he'd lost. "So... Dark magic is bad, right?"

She wiggled her shoulders in something like a shrug. "I've been known to use Dark magic on occasion. For good reasons. It usually requires something, though. In his case, the Dark Wizard built in a curse, that should the rat's loyalty ever waver the hand would turn on him. It strangled him to death before the war ended."

Bucky swallowed, a mix of hope and worry causing a lump in his throat. "Are you telling me that you can give me a new arm... but if I leave it might kill me?"

"I wouldn't be like that Dark Wizard, I'd let the requirement come from me."

His brows furrowed, not quite following and still a bit in shock at the idea of having a new arm. "Would it have to be made of silver?"

"I could probably make it out of anything I could conjure, I guess."

"Can you make it vibranium?"

"Vi-what?"

"It's what Captain America's shield was made of. Howard Stark said it was stronger than steel and a third the weight. The rarest metal on earth."

Hermione nodded and stood, taking two steps towards the newer section of her personal library. "I'll see what I can do."

"Hermione?" He asked softly, still a little worried about that ominous requirement she mentioned. "Don't sacrifice something just for me, all right? I'm not worth it."

She turned from her path and came to stand in front of him. "You _are_ worth it... but don't worry about it. It doesn't have to require anything horrible." He didn't believe her but he nodded in acceptance anyway.

Two weeks later, Hermione took him out to eat for his birthday. When asked if it was a special occasion by the waiter, Bucky said it was his twenty-eighth birthday. When they returned home, Hermione smiled and opened the fridge and pulled out a small cake with more candles than he could count. "There's ninety-five if you're wondering."

"I'm not ninety-five."

"You're still going to blow out ninety-five candles to get to eat this cake," she told him before she flicked her wand and lit all the candles at once. He tried his best to blow them out in one breath. When it looked like he was going to miss some she leaned forward and blew out the remaining few. She was close enough to kiss. She stood back up and shrugged, "Close enough." She cut him a slice and they sat and ate homemade birthday cake at the heavy table in the kitchen where they typically ate their meals.

"Thank you for dinner and the cake. It's a nice change from last year's birthday, cold and dirty and smelling of gunpowder and Kraut blood."

She winced; he picked up on it. "Another slur, huh?"

"I didn't realise how prevalent they were back then..."

"We were at war," he said, though he knew it wasn't a dig at his age or upbringing.

"There were plenty of slurs for people you weren't at war with too. Though, I've noticed you don't bad mouth the Irish."

"Steve was Irish."

She nodded, bringing the topic back around. "You're welcome for dinner and cake, of course, and there's still a gift I need to give you."

"But I don't need anything," he said. Besides an arm and a purpose in life but those weren't things that could be boxed up for a present.

She nodded like she agreed but said, "No, you've done very little complaining about not having your left arm... at least after the initial shock of losing it faded. I'm going to give you a new arm now."

He licked his lips, tasting the sugar from the icing there. He desperately wanted to be whole again but he was still wary. She had said that Dark Magic required something. What was she going to sacrifice to give him this? It had to be something worthy of an entire arm, didn't it? It couldn't just be giving up her favourite dinner for a week or something.

"If I... let you do this, what are you giving up?" he asked, feeling trepidation at his wording. He wasn't _letting_ her do anything, of course, but he didn't want her doing something horrible to herself to help him.

From the smirk on her lips, it looked like she had a problem with his wording as well. " _Letting_ me?"

"You know what I mean, I think. Don't do this just because it's something I want."

"I did a lot of research before I even brought it up, you know. I've had some idea of what I could give the magic in exchange and I think I've come up with something." She stood up and walked around the table to stand in front of him; he pushed back his chair to give her room. He figured she might need to actually touch him. "Can you raise your sleeve?" He was wearing a vest, or waistcoat as she'd called it, and a long sleeve shirt. There wasn't any raising going to happen, so he unbuttoned both and pushed the fabric over his left shoulder and down away from the stump. He couldn't tell what was going through her mind as she looked at his chest and arm. Before he could figure it out she asked, "Are you ready?"

"What are you—"

She shook her head and swished her wand in a complicated looking pattern. Something dark and powdery poured out of her wand into the space between them. It came together in the general shape of a left arm and hardened. It took on a light polished sheen before moving towards him and seamlessly attaching to his body. It didn't just connect in the middle of the bicep, though, it crept up and swallowed his entire shoulder. Up until that moment, there hadn't been pain but suddenly there was a sharp burning sensation across his shoulder blade and over his collarbone. His back arched and he hissed quietly in reaction to the pain. The pain only lasted a moment and then it was gone and he looked back at her, unsure what he would see. Had she given away something horrible like years off her life or something? While he was studying the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth for changes, her hair started falling off like it was being lopped off with a razor. The steady, calm look she always wore was gone and she looked scared. It took less than thirty seconds before the hair stopped falling and she was left with a close cut that resembled his when he shipped out for England in '43.

"Oh, Hermione," he whispered.

"Is it bad?" she asked in a small, quiet voice like she was only regretting the fact after it was done.

"No, doll. You're still just as beautiful."

She smiled and ducked her head before looking back at him. "I haven't ever been that concerned with my looks, really, but my hair was... it was a defining feature of who I was, who I am."

"Will it grow back?"

"Eventually." She nodded towards his new arm. "How's it feel?"

He twisted his left wrist, clenched his fist, flexed and marvelled at how the shiny metal seemed to bulge and tighten just as a normal arm would. "Like it's real."

"Well, it is your arm. It's not coming off or anything. It did..." she reached out and ran her finger lightly at the seam where metal met flesh. It tickled. "It took more than I expected. I didn't mean for it to go this far." Her finger had trailed from his collarbone down his pectorial and then down further. He was also a little shocked at how far down the new metal limb went. His entire armpit was shiny metal now. He reached up and massaged at his new shoulder. The metal gave a little under his fingers like flesh but it was cool to the touch.

"What's it made of?"

"Vibranium."

He looked back at her, the smile she was wearing was smug. "Really?"

"Yes. It took a special permit to the International Confederation of Wizards to access the Magical Libraries of Africa but I found references to vibranium and spells to conjure it."

He grinned but felt it fade as he murmured, "If only the boys could see me now... huh?"

She reached out and brushed his hair off his forehead.

Most of March was gone when Bucky found an online article about his remaining family when Hermione was at work. In his excitement, he grabbed a doorknob with his left hand and crushed it. It shocked him enough that he looked down at the offending appendage like he hadn't already claimed it as his. He was a little more subdued when Hermione finally came home.

"So, umm, I might have broken something," he told her from where he was standing in front of the stove following a recipe on his tablet.

"Is dinner supposed to be an apology then?" She asked. She was smiling, though, so he hoped she wouldn't be too mad at him. He held up his left hand and waved a little at her. "I found something online about my family—living family!—and I ended up crushing a doorknob. Seems I'm a bit stronger than I used to be."

Her brows furrowed adorably and she asked. "Can you try to replicate it with your right hand?"

One night, a week or two ago, he had trouble sleeping and had slipped into the library in the small hours of the morning. She was there already, just sitting there staring out into the shadowy shelves. She'd shared a little about her history, learning she was a witch and meeting her two best friends Harry and Ron. She talked about the past with such heavy nostalgia that he felt the need to share something heavy as well and had quietly shared things he'd never even told Steve about his time on Zola's table.

"You don't think it's just because my hand's metal?"

She shook her head. "So, what about your family? Are you going to see them?"

He dumped the container of rice he'd cooked earlier into the pan on the stovetop. "I want to. I mean, the article was about a great-nephew of mine named Fred and one of my sisters. Becca's still alive." He looked back at her, a smile wide on his lips to see she wasn't nearly as happy looking.

"Fred? I suppose that's better than another James in the family."

"Yeah, it's a family name."

She walked over to the counter where an owl had left her mail to shuffle through it. "I have a friend named Fred. He's a good man."

"He's named after my mom."

She stopped what she was doing to look up at him. "Your mom?"

"Winnifred, actually, but my dad called her Fred."

She hummed a contented little sound and asked, "What was your dad's name?"

He nodded as he pushed the frying rice to the side and added an egg to the pan. "George."

She chuckled. "George is Fred's twin's name."

He looked up at her. "It's a good pair of names. So... how come you haven't introduced me to any of your friends?"

The smile on her face turned brittle before it slipped away completely. "They're umm... they're just busy." She dropped the few pieces of mail she'd had back to the counter and asked, "So your nephew and your sister, are they both in the States?"

He didn't sigh so much as exhale a little heavier than normal. She was good at not answering questions when she wanted to be. "Yeah. I know you got me set up with all the new paperwork. I shouldn't have trouble getting there, right? I figure once I'm in New York I'll be able to find them in a pay phone directory or something. Becca's last name was in the article. Proctor." He stirred the cooked egg into the rice and transferred the vegetables to the pan.

"I don't think they have telephone boxes any more. Most directories are online. How old was the article?" She asked, walking around him to grab two plates and some cutlery to set the table.

A little ball of worry started to form under his ribs. "Oh, I don't know. Two-thousand-something. I'll have to go look again." He tested his metal palm against the hot handle of the pan with two taps before he decided the heat wouldn't be a problem. He picked it up and brought it to the table, tipping the pan to slide some food onto each plate. He returned the pan to the stove while she filled two glasses with water. Once they were seated, he asked. "Do you think I'm too late?"

"I don't know." She shrugged and took a bite of dinner. "I'll go with you if you want."

He hadn't realised how much he was dreading leaving without her until she made the offer. The tension in his back eased. If he was too late, at least she would be there with him. "I'd like that."

 *** . * . ***

 _The professional fireworks display hadn't even begun properly before Hermione got a whiff of the ozone and sulfur smell. That combined with the loud, booming noises had her twitching and wanting to crouch down and hide as she walked through the streets of Brisbane. She hadn't been able to sleep anyway and had decided to go for a walk. She was having trouble finding Monica and Wendell Wilkins in this city. It'd been four months since she started looking and she still hadn't found them yet. She knew this is where she'd sent her parents to protect them and she had expected to find a new dental practice or at least a listing for the Drs Wilkins but there was nothing of the sort._

 _Another boom echoed across the sky and she ducked and pressed her back against the nearest wall. It was a building of flats from the variety of decorations on the balconies above her. She concentrated on breathing slowly, really wishing she'd stayed in her hotel and cast a spell to block out the noise._

 _"Hey, are you all right?" someone asked. Hermione opened her eyes to tell them that she was fine but stopped short._

 _"Dad," she whispered and was happy it went unheard under another cracking boom from the fireworks. He looked different, tanned and happy, but also his clothes. Instead of the plaids and grey jumpers he'd typically worn at home he was wearing a colourful shirt and swimming trunks. There might have still been sand on his calves like he'd been out surfing late into the evening._

 _"You've got lovely hair, you know?" He smiled at her and called back to a friend Hermione hadn't noticed. "Hey, Jack? Doesn't her hair remind you of Monica's? Monica's hair is something I've always loved about her."  
_

 _His friend came up beside Wendell and laid his hand across his back. "Yeah, she looks just like Monica." Another firework boom echoed against the building and Hermione couldn't help the flinch it caused. "Hey, you want to come up for a glass of water or something? The noise won't be so bad inside."  
_

 _Her first instinct was to say yes because this was her dad, her second instinct was to question whether it was safe to enter a stranger's flat even though she technically knew him. Another echoing boom and crackle helped her make up her mind. "Yes. Yes, please."_

 _"It's no problem, come on. I'm Jack, by the way." He started towards the stairs and Wendell gestured for her to precede him.  
_

 _"No, I'll follow," she said._

 _"All right."_

 _She did follow him and listened as Jack rambled on goodnaturedly to try and distract her from the fireworks that were lighting up the sky in the distance. Hermione wondered if she would have a moment alone with her dad. She had the spell she needed to fix his memories and remember her._

 _Jack had been right about being inside the flat helping with the noises and he made sure she watched him open the fridge and pull out a pitcher of water and poured three glasses in plain sight. He drank from his first and let her take her pick of the other two._

 _She spent the next half hour chatting with them both about nothing in particular while she waited for the fireworks to end or for Jack to leave her alone with Wendell. Finally, he did, stepping into another room to answer his mobile phone. Before she could overthink it, Hermione pulled her wand, aimed it at her dad, and cast the spell that she'd found that was meant to reawaken memories._

 _He blinked at her and then looked at her wand._

 _"Dad?" she asked after a moment when he didn't answer her._

 _"Umm, sorry? Is this a joke? I'm no one's father, miss." He looked suspiciously at her wand again. "Maybe you should leave."_

 _Panic seized her and her eyes widened as she looked at Wendell more closely. It had to be him. He'd called her mom Monica which was the name she'd given her. "Are you not Wendell Wilkins?"_

 _"I am and I don't know how you know my name, I didn't introduce myself. You need to leave now."_

 _"No, but..." she cast the spell again. He didn't react like the book said he would. "It's supposed to reawaken memories. I'm your daughter!"_

 _"I don't have a daughter. Please leave before I call the police."_

 _She stood even though she didn't want to leave and she tried again even as he moved away from her. "But you said I looked like your wife, Monica."_

 _His eyes narrowed at her and she realised that he hadn't mentioned Monica as his wife either. More information that she just knew and, of course, he would be suspicious of her. She took a step closer to him to try and plead her case again but Jack was coming back into the room.  
_

 _"Hey, Dell, that was—where are you—"_

 _"This young lady is just leaving, Jack. Aren't you?" Hermione had never heard that tone from her father and it upset her._

 _"Can I at least have your number to—"_

 _"Jack, can you call the police, please?" he said again in that tone and Hermione's heart broke._

 _"I'm sorry, I'm leaving. Please, there's no need for that. I'm sorry." She went to the door and let herself out. She heard the deadbolt lock behind her._

 _She barely glanced around to check for Muggles before she Apparated back to her hotel room. She wouldn't break down and cry, not yet. She needed to do more research. Maybe there was something else she could do to fix Wendell's memories._

 _Hermione found herself wandering the Brisbane equivalent of Diagon Alley and talking with the bookshop clerk. He directed her to a different book about memories and spells than she had in Britain. It went into more detail about the types of spells that could and couldn't be reversed. The spell she'd used, that her other book had said was perfectly safe, wasn't reversible. The spell she had to reawaken memories didn't work because she hadn't just hidden the memories in Wendell's head but vanished them completely. He would never remember who she was.  
_

 _She sat on the floor in the middle of her hotel room laying over her new book as she sobbed. Her parents were lost to her._

 *** . * . ***

Bucky and Hermione flew to New York City the second week of April. Bucky had been in awe at commercial air flight until he sat down in one of the cramped seats and experienced turbulence mid-flight. Hermione wasn't much better and halfway through the rough patch grabbed his gloved left hand and didn't let go until after they landed.

The city was different than what he remembered and even more overcrowded. She found them a relatively affordable hotel room in Jersey from where they could look for more clues as to finding his family and he kept his complaining about it to himself.

They found Fred Winslow, Bucky's great-nephew by his oldest sister, first. He worked as a financial advisor near Bayonne. "You look like my uncle James," the middle-aged man said from behind his desk at the banking centre where Bucky and Hermione had found him, "well, like the picture mom's got."

Bucky smiled and nodded, "Try great-uncle James and you're on the mark."

"What?" Fred asked. He must have looked more like his dad or granddad. His dark eyes looked distrustful.

"Your grandmother's name was Trudy Barnes, right?"

"If you don't tell me what this is about, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Bucky tried again. "My name is James Buchanan Barnes. Trudy was the eldest of my three sisters."

"Is this some sort of joke?" Fred asked.

Hermione spoke from where she was sitting quietly next to Bucky. "No, sir. Bucky here was caught in a magic—"

"Pssh, all this ridiculous magic business. I'm not interested in whatever you're attempting to sell. Please leave, I have another appointment in a few minutes."

Bucky watched Hermione stiffen out of the corner of his eye and wondered what that was about. Perhaps this had been a bad idea but he still had one more question. "Please, Mr Winslow, can you tell me where I can find Becca Proctor?"

Fred frowned and sighed. He leaned forward and grabbed the lip of his desk like he was trying to roll his chair forward. "If I tell you, will you leave?"

"Yeah, we'll leave."

"And none of that magic crap, all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Where is she?" Bucky asked.

Someone came and knocked on the frame of the door behind them. "Mr Winslow? Did you need anything?"

Fred looked up and shook his head a little and smiled at her but it didn't look like a happy smile. "No, that's okay, Colleen, my clients here were just leaving."

"All right, call me if you need me," she said before she walked away.

Fred looked at Hermione and then Bucky and pressed his lips together like he wasn't sure what their deal was.

"Becca?" Bucky prompted again.

"Green-wood. Now please go."

Bucky felt his stomach clench and his disappointment was probably written on his face but Hermione grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged and he followed her out of the building. He started walking back towards their hotel and she fell into step beside him. "Do you know where Green-wood is?"

"It's a cemetery in Brooklyn."

"Oh, Bucky, I'm so sorry."

She stopped walking and he didn't for several paces before he stopped and turned back to look at her. "It's not your fault, doll," he said. He sighed and looked around. "That article was from last year... I thought... I don't know. Let's just... go back to the hotel, all right?" She nodded and caught up with him. He grabbed her hand as they walked and held it all the way back to the hotel.

In the early morning hours when he hoped she was asleep, Bucky cried into his pillow. It was hard to understand that his family was gone. Fred Winslow had no use for a misplaced soldier in the wrong century and Bucky had no life experience that would help him relate to the other man. He almost wished he'd died at the bottom of that ravine, if only for a moment. What would his Ma say if she'd heard him say something like that? Then, of course, he remembered that she'd already mourned him like he had died and his last sister had died sometime in the last year. His chest ached for the family he'd known and lost.

The following day, Hermione was more quiet than usual and Bucky didn't say anything. He respected her giving him time to grieve. The day after that, however, when she still wandered around the hotel room quiet as a church mouse he decided he didn't like it. "Hey, why don't we go to Coney Island tomorrow?"

"The amusement park?"

"Well, it's got a roller coaster, you know. At least, I hope it's still standing. I took Steve on it once when we had a little extra money." He paused for a moment thinking about it and then smiled, "He got so sick he didn't make it off the ride. Got it all over his clothes. The sour smell followed us the whole train ride home. He made me wash his clothes as payback."

"I've never ridden a roller coaster, actually."

"You haven't?"

She laughed a little as she sat down next to him on the couch. "No, but I've ridden a thestral—invisible meat-eating horse of death—and a dragon. So I think I have a feeling I know what it's like."

It took him five minutes to stop laughing before she could explain.

They spent a day at Coney Island where they rode the Cyclone twice, watched a few shows and just strolled along the boardwalk. They stopped at a shooting carnival game that had giant teddy bears to win and Bucky wanted to give a go, feeling a lot better about his chances than the last time he'd tried to win one of these. As they approached his eyes caught on a big sign that read, "NO MAGIC! Any sign of magic and violators will be escorted out of the park!"

He bit his lips and looked at Hermione, she was staring at the sign with a look of worry in her eyes and he decided he didn't want to spend her money on a game that was obviously making her uncomfortable. It was probably rigged anyway. He grabbed her hand and led her away instead.

"Now, a trip to Coney Island wouldn't be complete without..." he paused to look around and smiled when he saw the giant yellow sign right where he expected it.

"Without what?"

"Nathan's famous hot dogs."

"Hog dogs?"

"Oh, yeah. You've got to have one."

He got enough money to pay for them from her and ordered two just the way he and Steve had always eaten them. She looked sceptical at the mess he brought her back. She took a bite and made a face and he laughed.

"What is that?"

"That's a hot dog!" He bit into his and closed his eyes, almost feeling like he was back in his Brooklyn with Steve at his side. He might have even moaned.

"This isn't fit for human consumption," she said. He didn't mind that she interrupted his memory. It wouldn't do to keep wishing for the past. He couldn't live like that.

"Fine, I'll eat yours then," he told her as he finished his off in five big bites. Her smile let him know she wasn't mad at him.

"Do they really taste like they did in the forties?"

"Yeah, pretty much. There's more salt, I guess, but it's not bad." He took the little paper carton with her hot dog in it from her hands and started in on hers. He only paused halfway through to ask her, "Do you want me to get you something else?"

"I'll eat when we get back to the hotel." He swallowed the last bite and looked around for a trashcan. He didn't see one and frowned. "I've got it," she said and with a quick flick of her wrist and her wand, the two paper cartons disappeared from his hands.

"That's handy," he said, grinning.

"Hey!" someone shouted nearby. Startled they both turned toward the noise. "Magic's not allowed in the park!" It was a young man, maybe early twenties, with a military haircut. "Witches aren't allowed!"

"We were just leaving," Bucky said, stepping in between Hermione and the man whose hand was outstretched like he'd plan to touch her.

"Good riddance! We don't want your filth here!"

Bucky could have sworn he heard Steve's voice in his ear even as he puffed up his chest and made to tell the little shit off. A tug on his jacket and Hermione's quiet voice pulled him back into the moment. "Just leave it, Bucky, you can't go around punching people like you could in the past.; you'll get arrested. Come on, just ignore him."

He clenched his fist and turned to her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards the exit. "I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't know about..."

"It's fine. Magicals just don't have the same sort of rights here as they do in Britain. I didn't see a sign at the entrance of the park. It doesn't matter." He hadn't noticed a sign either but the truth was he hadn't been looking for it. Signs like that had never applied to him. He wasn't coloured or Jewish or Irish or queer. He'd seen signs like that all his life. She hadn't. Things like that weren't normal now, or they hadn't been for some time, until fourteen years ago or so when magic was exposed. She'd told him a little bit about that but he hadn't realised how hateful people would be about it. He should have known though. People always did need someone to hate.

"Still..."

She squeezed his hand tighter and they walked back to the station. Instead of getting on the train to head back to Jersey, though, he led her onto a different one. "I was thinking we could stop at the cemetery if you don't mind. I looked it up on my tablet, they've got a fucking directory for the thing, so I know where to go. Becca and... well, most of my family are together. Even the memorial for Steve."

"I don't mind." On the train, Bucky had the odd sensation of being watched. He made to turn around but was distracted because Hermione bristled beside him and turned around, putting her back to him and stepping into his space.

"You okay?" he whispered close to her ear. She only nodded but she didn't move from where she'd tucked herself against him until it was time to get off. Once on the surface and heading down the sidewalk, he asked, "What happened back there?"

"One of those men grabbed my arse."

"I'm sorry. You should have told me, I'd have done something."

She looked up at him and just shook her head. "It's normal. I actually expected the haircut to have stopped some of that. Guess not."

To try and distract her, though he didn't know if it would help he asked, "I have a magical arm. Does that make me magical?"

She chuckled and shrugged. "To wankers, yeah probably. Wearing long sleeves and gloves is a good idea. Plus, you're still dressing like you used to with the braces and the suit jacket. You pass as magical."

"Hmm. I look good in this even though the trousers are too tight."

She grinned and nodded, putting on a ridiculously fake innocent face. "Right, you are _very_ fit."

He pursed his lips and studied her for a minute. "I can't tell if that was a compliment or you're calling me something weird."

She held that innocent face a second longer then burst into laughter. It made him feel good that he could get her to laugh like that. They walked in companionable silence to the cemetery and into it, following a map that Hermione had pulled up on her handheld telephone—mobile, as she called it—to make sure they didn't get lost.

When they came to the little Barnes and Proctor section she hung back to let him have a moment. He was too busy looking at the way the dirt was still rounded over Becca's grave. The date of her death was a few days into February of this year. He'd missed her by a few months. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. He felt tears threaten to build at the back of his eyes and he closed them and turned his head down. He wanted to pray like he remembered his Ma and Mrs Rogers doing over Steve when he was sick when they were kids but he couldn't find the words. She was gone, anyway, what was the point in praying for someone who was already dead.

"Miss you, Becca," he whispered instead. He inhaled deeply, happy that the smells in the cemetery weren't anything like the battlefields back in Europe. Grass, trees, only the slightest bit of exhaust from all the traffic in the city. They were far enough in that even the sounds of the city were dulled. He turned back to Hermione and found that she had a small bouquet of flowers in her hand. She must have magicked them up. He smiled as she handed them to him to place at the small headstone.

After another few quiet moments, he turned and headed towards the large statue a dozen or so yards away. When he'd searched for information about Steve's memorial, he was surprised to find that the placement had been debated very hotly in the fifties. Since Steve was Captain America some wanted his memorial in Arlington in DC, others, including Becca, had argued that he was a Brooklyn boy and the memorial should be here near his family. He was glad Becca's side had won.

There wasn't much on the grave that was personal to Steve aside from his birthdate. The Commandos had laughed like hyenas when they'd learned that Steve's actual honest-to-God birthdate was the fourth of July. Frenchie and Monty hadn't found it nearly as humorous. Bucky couldn't bring himself to say anything at Steve's stone, only for the fact that he knew Steve wasn't there. No, his body was somewhere in the North Atlantic, buried in ice and snow and water. Just the idea of it made Bucky's skin crawl. It was probably morbid but he hoped the impact had killed him; he couldn't bear the thought of Steve drowning or freezing to death.

He turned and headed back to Hermione. "Would you like me to make flowers for him?"

"Nah. He's not there to appreciate 'em."

She nodded and they turned together to walk back to the subway.

A few days later, they were just out walking the streets of Manhattan. They hadn't needed to ride into the city but he couldn't stand being in Jersey for much longer and sight-seeing in the city was the only thing he could think to get out of their hotel room. "I need to go back to Britain today," Hermione said, catching him off guard; they'd been quiet for several blocks.

"Today?"

"I was going to get Portkey back. It's cheaper than flying."

"Why today, though?"

"It's the second of May; the day of the final battle. I need to pay my respects."

"Oh," he said feeling like a jerk for not knowing what to say. He swallowed and tried anyway. "Do you need to go alone or...?"

"Muggles can't travel by Portkey."

"Right, okay." They walked a bit farther and he finally decided to ask. "How long ago was it? And those other people, that statue? Who were they?"

He wasn't sure why he was trying to stall her except that he wasn't sure he wanted to be left alone here. It was New York, it was home, he'd finally come _home_ when he hadn't thought he'd ever see it again but it was so very different. He didn't know if he wanted to be here alone.

She gave him a sad little smile and pointed to a cafe they were coming up on. "Let's get lunch there, we'll sit out at one of the tables and I'll..." she inhaled deeply like she was trying to gather her courage. "I'll tell you my story."

 *** . * . ***

 _Hermione's ears were still ringing from the explosions and the roars of the giants. The smell of sulfur and blood seemed to coat everything and she couldn't get it out of her nose. Voldemort had called a temporary cease-fire to collect the dead. Harry had gone up to the headmaster's office and to give Ron a moment to hold his family close and thank Merlin that none of them had been hurt, Hermione followed Harry. She found him bent over the pensieve and she waited. She didn't want to violate Professor Snape's privacy by viewing the memories he'd haemorrhaged before he died. Instead, she just sat in the quiet in one of the squishy chairs that had been pushed against the wall and tried to breathe. The air was dusty in here like the house elves hadn't been allowed to clean. She hoped those that stayed to fight were okay.  
_

 _"Hermione?" Harry asked and she looked up to see him staring at her with wide eyes. Tears had slid down his face and made tracks in the dirt and grime there.  
_

 _"Yeah?"_

 _"I've got to..." He reached up and touched his forehead, his scar. "It's a part of him. I'm a..."  
_

 _She nodded, feeling the hair raise all along her arms. She didn't need to hear him say the word, she knew. She'd pieced it all together in her sleepless nights and hoped it wasn't as bad as she had thought it would be. He'd been made into an accidental horcrux and now to destroy Voldemort, Harry was going to have to die. "How do you want to do this?" she asked, terrified of what was to come._

 _He looked confused for a moment before he saw her palming Bellatrix's wand. He shook his head. "No, not just any way. Voldemort's got to do it."_

 _"What'd you just say, mate?" Ron asked, sounding incredulous. He was standing in the doorway having just come up the spiralling staircase.  
_

 _"I'm..." Harry tried again. "There's a piece of him inside me. I've got to let him kill... it."_

 _"But that means you'll..." Ron's eyes were wide and he shook his head as he spoke._

 _"Yeah. Probably." Harry swallowed and took in a deep breath. "You two will have to finish it, okay? You've got to do it."_

 _"We'll come with you," Hermione said, tears trying to clog her throat. She got up and flung herself at Harry. He held her tightly as he hugged her back._

 _"I can't ask you to do that."_

 _"We're not letting you ask. We're just telling you. You're not doing this alone."_

 _"Let's see if we can get Neville and Luna to kill the snake and when that's done..." Harry trailed off, still in shock at what he was expected to do._

 _"We'll do it," Ron said, agreeing._

 _The three of them found Neville and Luna standing at one side of the Great Hall, slumped against one another as they watched some of the others bring in another dead body. Harry laid out the plan without letting on what was going to happen, just that when Neville saw the signal—and he'd know—to try and kill the snake. Once the snake was dead, then Voldemort could be permanently killed._

 _The three of them walked into the Forbidden Forest together._

 _The Death Eaters with Voldemort grabbed at Hermione and Ron, dragging them apart from Harry who stood before Voldemort alone. The one holding Hermione pulled her against his body. "Mudblood or not, a woman's body's got its uses, my Lord." Hermione shook in his hands, suddenly terrified. She'd not expected sexual assault, she'd thought their hatred of her birth would be enough to discourage even the lowliest of Death Eater._

 _Voldemort waved his hand, "As long as you wait until after the Battle is won, I don't care what you do with her."_

 _Ron started screaming and trying to rip himself out of the arms of the man holding him. Without another word, Voldemort flicked his wand at Ron. Ron fell in a rush of sick green._

 _"No!" Harry shouted but he didn't try to run towards Ron's body. Hermione screamed and was punched for it. She felt a hand on her face, grabbing her chin and directing her attention back to Harry and Voldemort, an untold command to watch._

 _Harry stood tall in the clearing, alone, shaking and crying but he didn't say anything while Voldemort gloated. When the Killing Curse flew from Voldemort's wand there was an explosion of sound and light and the Death Eater holding her flinched and freed her. She blinked quickly and ran, only getting a glimpse of both Voldemort and Harry on the ground. The Death Eaters all around seemed so confused and lost to see their leader on the ground they let her go._

 _Low hanging branches caught at her face and arms and just as she saw the castle in the distance her foot slipped into a centaur's tracks and she heard a snap. Immense pain flared in her ankle but she couldn't stay where she'd fallen and she dragged herself up and ran on as fast as she could._

 _She only barely made it back to the edge of the courtyard before the procession of Death Eaters. Hagrid was carrying Harry's body. Someone else was dragging Ron's body by a rope around his ankle. She collapsed where she stood, in too much physical and emotional pain to hold herself up. Her scream of anguish mixed with that of the others—Professor McGonagall, Ginny, Molly, Fred and George.  
_

 _The procession passed where she lay and one of the Death Eater's kicked her in the stomach as they passed._

 _Time passed in hazy waves after that. She felt the shock of disbelief that rippled through the crowd when Neville beheaded the snake with the sword of Gryffindor. She heard someone shout Luna's name in distress and thought it might have been Neville. And then she heard Molly call out for Ginny._

 _Hermione looked up, terrified of what she would see. Neville and Ginny were standing next to one another, arms outstretched and wands held aloft._

 _Everything stopped when she saw sickly green come out of Ginny's wand. The Death Eaters froze and collapsed as if in pain, the students and teachers and Order members, they all stared in terrified awe as Voldemort collapsed to his knees, pure shock on his hideous snake-like features._

 _His body slumped back on the ground, dead._

 _When others celebrated, year after year, she wept. She couldn't face the Weasleys, her guilt in Ron's death weighed too heavily on her shoulders. Going with Harry had been her idea, after all._

 *** . * . ***

"So I decided to study time. They all said there was nothing I could do but there are time turners and other ways of time travel... I studied time to stop my mind from obsessing over it and to prove to myself that going back would only result in a different tragedy. By the time I found just the right combination to take me to the final battle, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Someone like Ginny or Neville could die instead and then it wouldn't just be replacing Harry and Ron's lives with theirs but it would cause their children to be unborn and I couldn't..."

Bucky watched as she lowered her head and wiped her tears with the soggy handkerchief he'd handed her when she first started to cry.

"I'm so sorry, Hermione," he said.

She tried to give him a grateful smile but it looked like a grimace. "And not even a month later, the magical world was exposed and Magicals everywhere have had to battle prejudices." She sighed and slumped back in her chair. "It's..." she trailed off and leaned forward again, eyes going wide and mouth dropping at something over his head. "What the... fuck what is that?"

He turned around instantly and had no trouble understanding her reaction. There was something... like a hole opening up over one of the tall buildings a little ways away from them. And foreign things were pouring out of it. Someone screamed when they also looked up and saw what Bucky could only think to call aliens and then more people started screaming and jumping up from their tables and running.

For a brief flash of a moment, Bucky was back on the battlefield, with the screams and the way the sky was starting to darken. Then there were gunshots and explosions and he was on a battlefield _in the middle of fucking New York!_ He looked back and Hermione and she had a look of grim determination on her face and her wand in her hand. She shared a look with him and then cast something over her head. One of the aliens and their flying aircraft came tumbling down to land beside their table.

"You think you can work that weapon, Sergeant?" she asked.

"You bet," he answered, leaning down and yanking what looked like a rifle out of the hands of the alien. He looked it over and nodded. "Let's go!" They weren't the only ones running towards the hole in the sky but they were some of the few. They were already right in the middle of the action before they'd gone a block. "Hermione, I need high ground!"

That was his first experience with her teleportation. He was a little dizzy but it didn't stop him from aiming and shooting two more of the aliens out of the damn sky. He swallowed down bile, unsure if it was from her magic or just the adrenaline of being back in a firefight.

Bucky heard the sound of an alien blaster behind him and he turned. That fucker was right behind him. He pulled back and swung with his metal hand. His hand crushed into what looked like a face. "Fuck!" He exclaimed, then laughed. "Hey, can you cover me so I can get this jacket off?" Hermione's attention didn't even waver as she flicked her wand in his direction. His suit jacket unravelled at the seams and fell off. "Nice, thanks!"

Aliens were still pouring out of the damn hole in the sky and suddenly something much bigger was coming out. It made him think of a whale—except the whole flying thing. "What the f—" his words cut off as a giant green—man?—jumped on top of one of the things and started beating on it. Another guy, who looked like he was flying, joined him.

"Hermione!" Bucky shouted over the din, "Over there!" He pointed to another rooftop with a better vantage point. She nodded and grabbed his wrist and then they were where he'd pointed. Except, between the time he'd pointed and they'd arrived, something had crashed into the corner of the roof and it wasn't there anymore. They both went sliding down the rubble and he dropped the rifle to catch her with his right hand and cling to the rebar sticking out of the concrete with his left.

"Bucky!" she said, sounding winded, "let go up there!" he wanted to ask if she was crazy but he trusted her and did as she said. Suddenly they were on an opposite rooftop that was still intact. The teleportation knocked them both over. He heard another blaster go often and wrapped his right arm over his own head and his left around her. The blast ricocheted off his vibranium arm and didn't so much as cause his arm and body to vibrate but he felt the impact deep at his spine and ribs. She was okay though.

"I lost my rifle!"

 _"_ Here, catch! _Accio rifle!_ " and another alien blaster was hurtling towards him. He jumped up and caught it before it flew over his head and shot the alien she'd stolen it from.

His gaze darted around to look for his next target and he froze when he saw something so familiar his bones tingled. Red, white, and blue tights. "Holy shit, is that Captain America?"

While he was staring slackjawed at what he felt was surely a ghost, Hermione screamed and suddenly he realised she wasn't next to him anymore. "Hermione!" She screamed again, this time something that sounded like _abracadabra_. Bucky leaned over the edge of the roof to see her hanging on the edge with one hand. He grabbed her wrist and hauled her up and when he set her down she curled in on herself like she'd been punched in the gut.

He didn't have a medkit on him, there was nothing he could do if she was bleeding out, so all he could do was cover her. "Get down! Can you heal whatever hurts?"

She gasped and he felt her hand wrap around his calf. She'd collapsed to her knees beside him. "Dammit," he muttered. More curse words fell from his lips as he systematically worked at taking out every single damn alien he could see. One of his shots coincided with an arrow impacting the same alien.

"Arrows? Someone's using a fucking bow and arrow around here? What's next, a damn sword and shie—"

He caught what he was about to say but he couldn't stop the pang in his heart. That man down there, wearing Steve's Captain America uniform, might have been using the shield. ...but Steve went down with his shield, didn't he? Wouldn't he have had it with him on the plane?

Bucky tried to look around for the man again, just to see... Of course, if Hermione could make him a vibranium arm then surely another Magical could just as easily make a new vibranium shield for a new Captain America. He only allowed himself a short moment to look. Hermione had got hurt because of his distraction and he wouldn't allow himself to do that again.

There was the almighty roar of aircraft in the sky and Bucky looked up just quick enough to see what had to be modern American fighter planes. He whooped in excitement because that meant back up. They didn't stick around for long, though, which confused him. He saw something red catch something that had come from one of the fighter planes and take it up into the hole in the sky.

The aliens around them all collapsed and one of the flying whale things came crashing down directly towards the building they were standing on. "Hermi—"

Teleportation was a bitch. This time, they were on the ground and he gave in to the urge to vomit. After he wiped his mouth he asked, "How the fuck do you do that? _What_ is that?"

She grinned a little and chuckled without actually making a sound. "It's called Apparition." She was still on her knees next to him and in the sudden quiet he was looking her over for blood or wounds. She looked up and gestured with a tip of her chin. "The hole's closed."

A sudden roar echoed around the deserted streets that had the hair standing on the back of his neck. "What the fuck was that?" He jerked to attention and clenched his fists, pissed to find he'd dropped another rifle with the Apparition-teleportation shit.

"The green guy, I think he's called the Hulk. He was fighting those things too. He's on our side."

"How badly are you hurt?" He asked, relaxing his hands before holding them out to her, hoping to help her stand.

She took his hand and stood gingerly as she spoke. "I... I got winded pretty bad and all the explosions and the smell..." She shook her head and looked down like she was ashamed. "I had a flashback."

"Can I check to see if your ribs got broken?"

She raised her head and met his gaze and he held the contact. He wouldn't shame her for having troubles. He'd had his own flashbacks—in the war and recently—she'd been there for him. He'd try and be there for hers. "Yeah, you can check."

He was careful when he reached forward, not wanting to touch her inappropriately. He pressed along each side, counting each as he went. She jerked and hissed a breath at one of them near the bottom but it didn't feel broken. "Cracked, maybe. You said magic can fix mundane wounds, right? Does a punch from an alien count as mundane?"

She tried to laugh again but caught herself. "What got you so distracted? Wait," she interrupted herself, "You said something about Captain America. Did you _see_ him?"

"Yeah. I did. Or at least I saw someone in Steve's USO outfit. I want to find out who that was." The tears in his throat caught him by surprise. "I... I need to find him, Hermione. It can't be him but..."

She looked around at the rubble of the city like she didn't know what to say.

He remembered belatedly that this entire thing, this battle, had just happened on the anniversary of one of the worst days of her life and he felt like kicking himself but he needed to know for sure. He couldn't leave without knowing who was behind that mask.

"Please," he said, reaching for her hand, "Come with me?"

Her face scrunched like she was trying not to cry but she looked up at him and nodded. "Okay."

 *** . * . ***

It took them a while to walk around the rubble and the destroyed streets in the direction he'd seen Captain America but Hermione was glad he was being patient with her. Her ribs and stomach hurt awfully. He held her hand or if she needed help stepping over chunks of road he would put his hand lightly behind her back to steady her.

People were starting to come out of the buildings and emergency workers were starting to move into the area. Bucky stopped to ask a few people if they'd seen Captain America and when they pointed him further on he nodded his thanks and then moved on. Hermione wanted to help but she hadn't seen any other Magicals; she didn't know if any of these people would appreciate her help.

Finally, they noticed a food shop, Schwarma, from the look of what was left of the sign. There was a large group of rough looking people looking exhausted sitting around the only upright table in the place. They looked like how she remembered the weary and wounded looked after the Battle of Hogwarts. She could just make out someone in a bright blue outfit in the back. Bucky stopped and his breath caught, the man he was looking for had his helmet off.

She reached down and grabbed his hand again, wondering when he'd pulled it away from her. "I'll stay with you, Bucky."

He gave her a sad little smile and sniffed like he might cry before nodding and pushing open the door.

Most of the people around the table didn't bother moving but there was a single woman and she looked up when they came inside. An Arabian man shouted from behind the counter, "We're closed! Go away!"

Bucky was ignoring him and staring openly at the man at the back of the table who hadn't moved since they stepped in. In a voice so quiet that Hermione, even standing right next to him, almost didn't hear, Bucky whispered, "Steve?"

The man in blue looked up and his jaw dropped. The others around the tabled noticed that and also looked up. One man answered, "Hey, saw you guys helping earlier. Thanks. Who are you?"

Bucky nor Steve said anything so Hermione answered. "Are you the bow and arrow guy?"

"Yeah," he answered at the same time the woman stated, "You're a witch."

"Yes."

She eyed Bucky's metal arm where the shiny polished metal showed through a large rip in his sleeve. "Is he?"

"No, he's not a wizard... but he's..." Before Hermione could explain more Steve had stood up and the others were now looking back and forth between him and Bucky.

"Bucky?" Steve asked. Bucky nodded and took a step forward. Steve's gaze caught on his metal arm. "How...?"

"I could say the same thing about you, punk."

And then they were both rushing forward around the table to wrap their arms around one another and sharing soft-spoken words of reassurances and promises. Hermione wanted to turn away because it was painful to watch how they took stock of one another. How they gazed in shocked awe that they somehow survived all the shit they'd faced.

She knew that bond, forged by war and necessity and home. She'd had it with Harry and Ron. She bit her lip to stop her own tears as she thought about them. It'd been fourteen years and she still missed them dreadfully.

 _Hermione_ , she heard and she almost turned to her left to see Ron, it'd been his voice she'd heard say her name. She didn't turn though, instead, she watched as Steve turned to introduce Bucky to the men and woman at the table. _We'll stay with you_.

Harry, on her right, seemed to agree. _We'll always stay with you._


End file.
